Stupid
by Paine3
Summary: Paine and Baralai's affair causes Paine to doubt that she is a good person. With the wedding drawing ever closer, one month turning to one day, she wonders if their love is really worth the trouble it may cause. Is it? Or is she just stupid? Two shot now
1. One Month

I never really saw myself as the 'other woman' type. Sure, maybe a load of other people had, but they did not know me. They only went by appearances. Stupid people... I'm not a bad person. I am not even close to a bad person. No, of course not... They thought I looked like some kind of stripper or something. Not true...

They just did not know me, and that was why I could not admit that maybe they were right... Maybe I am a bad person. How do you define a bad person, exactly? I saved the whole world for Yevon's sake! I am a great person, right? If I asked Rikku she would probably say, "Yeah, Painey, of course! You're great! Why would you ask a silly question like that?" I would bet a thousand Gil that Yuna would probably agree. So would everyone else I consider a friend, I'm sure of that.

But maybe that was because they did not know what I knew about myself. They did not know where I went after I made some random excuse for having to leave the Celsius. They did not know where I really spent my nights, or what I _really_ did.

What if they knew the real me? What if they could see this me... If they only knew the things I did...

Would they still say: "You're a good person, Paine"...? Or would they say just the opposite?

I try not to care about what other people think. I try not to care about how much trouble I am in, or may get into. But this... This, I just don't know about it...

Right now I am standing in someone else's bathroom, in front of someone else's mirror, wearing someone else's very large shirt. That someone else is still asleep in the next room. I stared at my red eyes while twirling my short silver hair around one of my fingers. I constantly have to keep telling my reflection that I am _not_ wrong... That it is everyone else that just does not get it. _They_ were the wrong ones. _They_ were the unjust ones. Stupid New Yevon priests and their stupid laws... They started this mess. They started it... not me...

"I love him," I said. "_I _do. I _deserve_ to be with him. He wants _me. _He does not want _her_." Every word of which was very true. With this in mind I walked out of the large bathroom and into the even larger master bedroom of his apartment home. He was, as I said before, still asleep in his bed. He looked so calm and innocent, lying on his back, with one arm outstretched. Yawning, I climbed underneath the covers, resting my head against his bare chest. "Baralai?" I whispered, looking up at his face as I gently shook him. He opened his eyes and then stretched, yawning loudly and rubbing his eyes.

"Yeah...?" he groaned, looking down at me with only one kind brown eye.

"I'm not a bad person am I?" I asked worriedly. He sat up and I propped myself up on one arm. He was wide awake now.

"Of course not," he assured me, running a hand lovingly and gently through my hair. I closed my crimson eyes and leaned against his hand, sighing with content. "Why?" he asked. I did not answer right away. I only reopened my eyes and stared through the darkness at him. But he had this look on his face which showed that my silence was beginning to worry him. He was always worrying about me... I knew that some days he worried so much about me – about_ us_ – that it actually made him sick.

"It's nothing," I said finally, smiling the small little smirk he always said that he loved. He looked relieved to see it, and I gave him a small kiss on the cheek before we both lay back down on the bed together. He put his arms around me and was almost immediately asleep again, but not before he whispered that he loved me. I looked over at the blinking light from my comsphere which rested on the table next to the bed. It showed that it was now three in the morning. "One month..." I said quietly. "Exactly one month until the wedding, 'Lai" It was going to be his wedding to_ her_... not his wedding to me.

All because of those stupid little people that just could not understand...

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

Yeah, I revised it a little...


	2. One Day

I stared out at Bevelle. It was so beautiful tonight. People were celebrating in the streets, waiting for midnight. No one could wait for it to come.

I could though. I did not want today to end. I did not want it to be tomorrow... Tomorrow was his wedding day. Tomorrow he would go from being just a cheater to an adulterer. We had talked about ending our relationship tonight. For a moment we thought that it was our best option, somtimes we felt that it was our _only _option. Being together after he was married would not only be dangerous but harder to keep private.

It made me sick to think about it. To think that he was obligated marry a woman he hardly ever had the chance to see or even talk to. The priests had mostly kept them from one another. "Temptation," they had said. They had wanted to avoid any "temptation..."

_What stupid bullshit... And she's equally stupid to take that. _

I had thought that maybe I should just get up and leave him. Some nights I was unable to sleep because I felt so... stupid, and so terrible. I knew he had done the same. Sometimes when I slept next to him I would wake to find him sitting up and talking to himself. This affair was hard on both of us. So why did we stay? Why didn't I leave? Why didn't he leave? I should have just walked away after the first time, I should have just walked away and never come back. It was just a mistake, we hadn't meant to do anything as serious as having sex together. I had only kissed him because he was feeling so depressed. I had only meant for it to be a short, friendly, little kiss. All I had wanted to do was show that I was there for him.

I still wonder why I did not stop him when he began to take it past friendly.

_It's because I'm a stupid idiot and a terrible person, that's why!_

I stared down at all the happy people. They were celebrating the end of an old year, and the start of a new one. How ironic that _New_ Yevon's leader would be staring a _new _part of his life on the start of the _New _Year. Yes, how very 'ironic'...

I would be starting a new part of my life tomorrow too. The man I was secretly dating behind all of Spira's back would be a married man. My boyfriend would have a wife. That wife was not going to be me though. That would just be too simple. I couldn't have fallen for someone like Gippal! I had to fall for the hottest, nicest, funniest, most sensitive, and most _engaged _man on this damned continent...

Life in the Crimson Squad was simple compared to life in the Post-Vegnangun-Gullwings. Back when I had never imagined myself with Baralai in a romantic relationship... Back when he was not Praetor and back when I thought love was just for fools and that marriage was moronic. I missed those days. I really missed those days.

I tried to keep my attention on the crowd, instead of on my life. I wanted to focus on _their _lives. Their lives were probably less complicated and less screwed up than mine was. More than half of those people were older than I was, older than only nineteen years old, and they all probably had less problems than me. How many of them had mothers and fathers that were alive and well, brothers and sisters, and homes. How many of them had been shot in the back! Possessed by a spirit's vengeful rage... Fired upon by a huge machina! How many of those happy little Bevellians had seen Sin attack their homes, or kill a thousand people at once...?! How many of them had gone through even a quarter of the things I have gone through!?

And most importantly: How many of them knew the truth about the organization they held so dear? How many knew what was _really_ going on behind those closed temple doors...?

Baralai was down there in the huge crowd somewhere. He was in charge of the countdown to midnight. Another stupid idea from stupid New Yevon... I had wanted to spend this night with him, and he had wanted to spend it with me. I have never doubted that he loves me. He had fought to get out of this engagement, he had fought very hard. But there was no way out. Leaving New Yevon was not only dangerous, it was practically _impossible_. No one wanted Baralai to leave his position. Not the people, not New Yevon. Not even me... This job was his life... This job had made him happy... It _had_. Until they completely screwed him over.

_Damn this stupid holiday! Damn this stupid organization! Damn my soft, stupid heart...! Damn Baralai... Damn me...!_

It was almost midnight. The people down below me were growing louder. I tightened one of Baralai's spare robes around me as the wind picked up a bit. I could hear them screaming. Baralai was leading them, I knew he was.

"TEN!"

_Here we go..._

"NINE! EIGHT! SEVEN! SIX! FIVE!"

"Paine."

"FOUR!"

I looked over my shoulder. My jaw practically unhinged itself. There he was, standing there in the doorway to his bedroom. He had already taken off his robe and even his shoes, he just stood there in his shirt and pants and belt, staring at me with a cautious look on his handsome face.

"THREE!"

"Baralai, what are you doing here...!?" I asked him as he hurried forward.

"TWO!"

"I couldn't spend this night without you..." he whispered, taking my face in his hands.

"ONE!"

As the fireworks went off Baralai kissed me on his balcony, above all of Bevelle as their cheering rang in my ears. Light exploded in the sky, there was music, and clapping. I felt like it was all for me – for us, actually. All of it was just for us... and no one else knew.

I completely forgot that today was now his wedding day.

We did not break apart until the cheering had died down and the fireworks had ceased. Baralai looked down at me, all of the city lights reflecting in his brown eyes. He was smiling. He was happy. "H-How...?" I asked him. "I thought you were..."

"Yuna," he said, smirking – he learned that from me... "What, you _honestly_ thought that I would spend this night away from the woman I love more than anything in this world...?" he asked me, with a certain haughtiness that he had picked up from me too.

I smiled and laughed, causing him to do the same as he continued to hold my face close to his. I put my arms around his neck. "Of course not..." I said smugly, pushing him back into his bedroom. I let go and closed the double doors to the balcony behind me, and locked them. Then I reached for the collar of the robe I was wearing. "What do you think I am? Stupid?"

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

This is probably the last chapter of this, which is why I ended it with that line. Someone had asked if I was going to continue it and I desperately wanted to do so but had no idea how until New Years. It just made since to do it this way. I didn't give his fiancée a name because I wanted to keep her a little ambiguous. So, here is Stupid in all of its (hopefully completed,) two-shot glory. I am thinking about making a real story about their relationship after the marriage, but who knows. I'm not exactly good at updating stuff.

Adios, and a Happy New Years to all! (Chris, you haven't called me today, where are you! Throwing up _still_?!)


End file.
